matrix revolutions better than LOR

[ville terminale]

matrix revolutions, like return of the king, has the advantage of
focusing on the climactic action since most of the idiotic plot and
thematic elements have been developed in the preceding installments.
It's payoff time, main course after the formality and appetizers. dig
in and pig out.
i didn't care for the first matrix and couldn't make myself see the
second, yet just out of curiosity i caught the third, considered by
nearly everyone as the worst of the series. i dunno about the second,
but i much prefer the third over the first as i prefer ROTK over FOTR
or Attack of the Clones over previous Star Wars films. it depends on
what you expect from these mvoies. if you really look for plot,
characters, and themes in these silly movies, then maybe you prefer
the more character-friendly earlier films. if however, like me, you've
given up on finding anything meaningful in these films and only care
for bang for the buck, then matrix revolutions gives you just what you
need. i didn't care for much of ROTK but the scenes of gandalf riding
against the flying lizards with his beaming staff, of the cavalry
smashing thru an orc flank, and of the pounding battle between
horsemen against the mastadons were pretty awesome stuff. same must be
said for the climactic battle in matrix revolutions. the basic concept
is tiresome--as in ROTK--but the execution is a wild rollercoaster
ride, a knockout.
matrix revolutions also has a decisive advantage over ROTK as it's
lacking in epic pretensions; matrix revolutions is happily a
videogame techno-action spectacle and though not entirely without
pretension, it's much easier to laugh off. i don't know about
tolkien's novels but i'm willing to give the benefit of a doubt that
they ARE important works of popular fiction. matrix, on the other
hand, despite its allusions to various religions and whatnot, is
essentially a flaky rave party as kungfu videogame; you can take it or
leave it without batting an eye. if i rejected the first installment,
it was largely because there was too much plot development and
pseudo-spiritual exposition; keanu reeves as jesus, fishburne as john
the baptist... okay, okay, eat your cereals children and silly rabbit,
matrix is for kids... also, i thought matrix offered nothing new
except sci-fi cliches reloaded into new age gobbledygook and wrung and
strung thru hong kong wire-fu act, with alot of gimmicky CGI tossed
into the mix. it was a tsui hark/john woo movie done with all the
glitz of calvin klein/pepsi commercial meant to be swallowed as the
neo-testament. and, not surprisingly, among my friends who liked it,
most belonged to the rave party crowd, a silly bunch of fellas if
there ever was one.
matrix revolutions isn't any smarter but the dam bursts with a flood
of special effects, and the viewer can sit back and let images of
things blowing up wash over him. movie bogs down only when people
emote or talk, mostly cliched nonsense about power of love,
narcissitic and petulant expression of selfhood, faith in miracles,
the glory of teamwork, etc. and of course, every bad guy blabbers on
and on like a james bond villain--no doubt, the primary bug in the
matrix software to oppress humanfolk. but, thankfully everyone's too
busy fighting to talk much, and the battle scenes pack quite a punch
even if lacking the level of mastery that lucas attained in the
closing scenes of attack of the clones. perhaps, it's a generational
rift. lucas, having grown up on a fuller and deeper understanding and
love for classic cinema--much of it silent and foreign--worked from a
richer film vocabulary than the wacko brothers, nurtured on videogames
and rave parties. judging by the brilliance of thx 1138, given the
chance and support lucas could have become a great intellectual
filmmaker. lucas belongs to the soulful 60s generation, informed by
if not directly involved with the far-reaching psychedelic movement
emphasizing the need to reconnect with nature, with personal
spirituality. wacko brothers, members of what might be called the
cyber-centric technedelic movement--techno, rave, hiphop, videogame,
mtv--are steeped and trapped in technology, even as their message
strives for unabomber romanticism. its idea of spiritual
enlightenment is to lock oneself within a neonlit artificial techno
space, shut off the world, and find truth as revealed thru the rhythms
of heavily computerized dance music. so when matrix revolutions ends
with sunlit imagery, it's not real sunlight but just a cyber mirage,
where even the concept of nature itself is dysfunctional. the only
reality is a hipsterish buddhist notion of inner nirvana attained by
kicking a white CEO's ass in sony playstation universe, surely much
more fun than meditating under a tree for 30 days.

though hardly a fan of techno/rave music, i understand its appeal; it
has a irresistibe rhythmic momemtun and burrows into previously
unexplored aural spaces . though essentially mindless, there's a sense
of adventurousness, an approximation of a mind journey into farflung
areas of human consciousness.
also, we must acknowledge that music hasn't only accompanied but
influenced the movie image. for instance, the score for once upon a
time in the west was composed prior to the shooting, and leone molded
the image to the music. the connection between sound and image is a
tricky but real one; silent movies, lacking sound, worked according to
a different dynamic than dialogue driven movies. the silents were more
expressionalistic, free flowing, and bolder than the sound films that
followed. and the music of a particular generation or culture
affected the visual characteristics of its respective cinematic
output. for instance, the silent german classics span their visual
wings across a symphonic sky, whereas traditional westerns hum to the
simple melodies of cowboy songs; leone's westerns owe their
exaggeration to Italian opera, and the nihilistic samurai films derive
their razor-like sharpness from the cold minimalism of japanese music.
tarkovsky's cinema would be inconceivable without the spiritual
tradition in russian music. and, matrix revolutions owes a great deal
to the technomusic of the 80s and 90s. one might venture to guess
that the greatest revolutions in cinematic style derived more from
music than from previous movies. suppose scorsese had seen a million
movies but hadn't experienced the rock music of the 60s. the music
scorsese heard became as much a part of his visual style as the movies
he had consumed. also, kurosawa said his favorite music was western
symphonies, and visual texture of movies like kagemusha and ran owe as
much to mahler as to ford and japanese artistic traditions. one may
surmise that because music digs deeper into one's subconsciousness,
it's the more important well-spring for visual creativity than
image-centered art--painting, photography, other movies, etc--for the
filmmaker(consider how barry lyndon's finely measured expression owes
to the music of the period being depicted). before an image is shot,
it has to be conceived and this process is closer to music, molding
something as yet fluid and undetermined, something that has a life of
its own before being trimmed and framed into celluloid. one can
imagine that the wacko brothers spent many nights with eyes closed at
a rave party, journeying on some weird drugs--especially those
heightening visual perception--which conjure up mental imagery
rattling and expanding to the pulsating rhythms of techno. though
wacko brothers have borrowed much from other directors, their
signature rave style is their own--though developed independently by
others of the MTV school as well. it's an slick mix of tumultuous
afrobeat in rave music with lulling spiritual ambience lifted from
world cultures; rave music has the thumpity thump beat which is
suddenly interrupted by booming aural oasis which is then quickly
overtaken by some middleestern babbling, only to return to afro-techno
rhythm. it has a tireless, restless, and manic musical sense, but
sound technology has allowed every other note to expand into an
instantaneous aural universe, a bubble cathedral popping in and out of
your consciousness.
rave music moves forward but every note lingers and seem to loom
larger as it recedes into the background. the wacko brothers visual
signature takes its cue from this musical quality in rave. the use of
slo-mo was already perfected by peckinpah and hill. and the tricky
acrobatic editing of hong kong films has also been imitated by others.
what wacko brothers have introduced is using slo-motion not only to
convey the subjectivity of time --peckinpah or hill--but to convey the
infinity of every second, the limitless cosmic horizon within every
moment. matrix's slo-mo also accentuates the masterful zen calm of
mystical warriors who show utter poise and grace even in the meanest
heat of battle. when we see carrie anne moss, arms outstretched like a
bird of prey and with a facial expression as calm as that of a
slumbering goddess, briefly appear in slo-mo over her intended target
she's as much a angel as a warrioress. we have seen calm, cool, and
collected killers in Leone westerns and hormone pumped killers in
countless action films, but give wacko brothers credit for masterfully
injecting tautly controlled moments of calm into the storm of
violence(though film buffs might argue wong kar wai did it first in
ashes of time). these moments are not mere visual tricks, expressions
of psychological states, but meant as demonstration of zen master
spirituality, for whom there is always calm at the center of the
hurricane, a complete control over mind and body, stillness within the
movement, poise within the mayhem, art within the act. these fights
are not simply kick-em or shoot-em ups but action as a meditative act,
a notion pervasive among the rave crowd, who believe that they are not
simply shaking their booty but conversing with buddha.

matrix universe draws upons ideas and themes from many different
sources, from cultures both ancient and modern, esoteric and popular.
'appropriation', the term coined to describe the process thru which
modern corporations co-opt various cultural and ideological fashions,
perfectly describes matrix's strategy despite its anti-corporatist
pretensions. for example, matrix takes from black experience its
magical folkloric elements as well as the powerful and noble
iconographic image of the rebel slave; also the ideal of strongwilled
uppity black woman. this is hybridized with a wagnerian teutonism, of
which rutger hauer as robot slave rebel in blade runner was another
variation--perhaps the best ever. black uppitiness and rage crossed
with stolid germanism is then given a touch of zen with references to
eastern philosophies--the oracle, for instance, smokes cigarettes like
a japanese master preparing and sipping tea, as a meditative act.
expanding on the orientalism is the presence of an asian-indian girl
named suti, thus throwing some curryflavored mystical hinduism into
the mix. her father is a computer programmer suggesting that the
hindus of today--who are heavily represented in hightech industry and
research--are seeking the same profound truths but via the keyboard,
or that the today's technology--of which matrix films are the prime
example--are merely latest manifestations of man's search for the
profoundest mysteries; a world of cyber-yogis(also suggested by pi by
aronofsky; why wait for god's answer when you can always call a palm
reader--or a stockbroker--on your cellphone?). presence of the hong
kong actor underpins the concept of harmony of mind and body, as
represented in martial arts tradition of the east where the warrior is
expected to find spiritual calm within the maelstrom of physical
violence. yogi pierces his body with needles but is oblivious to pain,
a kung fu master kicks ass but does so as though merely waving his
fart away--the ideal of tackling with the world while not losing
connection with the eternal tao. on a more brazenly visceral level,
matrix takes from the combination of acrobatics, quasi-musicalism, and
visual trickery, juggling them with fascist momumentalism of
riefenstahl(by way of lucas, cameron, scott), plasticity and slickness
of anime, the fervor of revolutionary films such as battle of algiers,
and the insanely stylized nihilism of Leone westerns, etc, etc. etc.
matrix cops from everything under the sun in its
comicbook/mtv/videogame vision of salvation, redemption, apocalypse,
and rebirth. still, wacko brothers are not mere hacks but auteurs
though in a very superficial way. they've fully digested the material
and constructed new possibilities. it's surely hardest to come up
with something entirely new, but taking and squeezing some fresh juice
out of wornout cliches is no easy task either. leone's revamping of
the western was a stunning achievement. wacko bros, at their best
moments--though few and far between--,manage the same with matrix
revolutions.

one of the fresh things in matrix revolutions is its conception of the
attacking machine army. in the popular imagination, machines act one
way, living things in another. the octopoid force--sentinels--are
machines behaving like a swarm of bees. these machinese don't act
like the stereotypical army of robots mindlessly marching in unison
but like a school of fish, possessed of collective consciousness, a
team spirit and unity--quality we usually associate with humans.
machines of matrix acting with natural herd instinct--so different
than from the singleminded behavior of, say, terminator machines--is a
frightfully exhilarating sight. seeing these creatures blitzkrieging
in savage yet coordinated unison against outnumbered humans with their
clunky gundam armor is spine-chilling, like being assaulted by a
school of barracudas. a certain role reversal takes place, as people
are forced to act in the cautiously mechanical manner we associate
with machines. machines are savagely alive while humans are coolly
methodical.
the universe of matrix being what it is, where machines have the
fierce lifeforce and humans depend for survival on mechanical military
discipline, ultimate salvation can only be attained thru mind
games--spirituality and faith in miracles('...and may god bless us
all!', said tiny tim). the point of matrix is machines can kick our
ass physically, even rationally. but being so coldly rational it
doesn't have that most foolish but magical of human qualities, a
mythic faith in love, miracles, and that place somwehere over the
rainbow. yes, the world of Oz is pretty badass but nothing compared
to the faith of Dorothy who, going clop clop, finds herself in Kansas
again.

matrix films also offer a wishful vision of racial utopia. everyone is
ethnically BLAH here. black people don't act black, white don't act
white, asiasn don't act asian, women don't act womanlike(though
everyone maintains minimum flavor of their ethnicity--multiculturalism
as fragrance). all the good guys talk in a kind of throaty
ultra-dignified pregnant monotone, as though an 8 lb profundity is
about to be birthed from their lips. it's a vision of humanity
without past history--of conquests, prejudices, wars, genocides,
slavery, etc--, a bland humanity united in equal victimhood toward
liberation from a common enemy. in this sense, matrix revolutions is
an amnesiac piece of racial fantasy. it distracts us from the racial,
religious, and ethnic tensions--still the most potent around the
world--by focusing on some common bogey man(or machine), the sci-fi
cliche of technology run amok(machines are the new movie Nazis, though
as a overused scapegoat, perhaps the new Jews, an ambuity brilliantly
explored in the great Bubblegum Crisis). the machine as common enemy
serves the same purpose that sep 11 serves in domestic politics, where
the generally disunited populace united to face the common enemy of
terrorism. so in this regard, for all its revolutionary pretensions,
matrix revolutions is a wishful and reactionary anesthesia imagining a
world of racial harmony united against the greater enemy. what with
the rampant and intimidating nature of political correctness,
moviemakers--consciously or subconsciously--are afraid of being
labeled as prejudiced in vilifying any national, ethnic, racial, or
religious group. nazis or white supremacists became the all-purpose
bad guy, but, as matrix takes place in the future and wants blonde
aryans in the audience to feel included too--especially as their
wallets are packed as fully as any other--, how much more convenient
to scapegoat machines. until machines become sentient one day and form
their version of the NAACP or Anti-defamation League, they're gonna
get banged up like the indians of pre-60s westerns. perhaps, the
relative box office failure of AI had something to do with its asking
the viewer to consider the 'humanity' of machines, which to an average
teen is about as exciting as a lesson given to a john wayne fan about
the humanity of redskins. however, like blade II(which I haven't seen
as the trailer was enough), matrix revolutions goes the extra
step--out of cleverness or to expand on the theme of unifying against
common enemy--in having humans ultimately allying with hardware
machinery to defeat the more insidious software virus
villain--reminiscent of Largo character in Bubblegum Crisis--a cross
between a Fed and gordon gekko. perhaps, wacko brothers think they
are being insightful, reminding us that the world exists in a constant
state of tension, that alliances are never forever. so, it leaves
itself open for yet more sequels.

attack of the clones, the title of lucas's movie, is the best
definition of the current phenomenon of popular movie culture as
informed by computato (computer couch potato) generation weaned on
virtual reality, instant access, super convience, and its zero
tolerance for the fecund, earthy, natural, whole grain. can matrix
fans sit thru open city? can LOR fans sit thru excalibur? can star
wars fans sit thru 2001? in the latter films, the medium of film was
used to explore a world outside cinematic conventions. CGI, for all
its dreaminess, is in texture, aura, and mood one and of the same.
the climactic scene in attack of the clones which restaged the great
tank battles of WWII in galactic setting was one of the few
exceptions, as was the eerie journey thru the lonely future landscape
in AI. Cell's use of CGI had some truly bold, original moments; but,
by and large, artists that truly shake us out of our doldroms and take
us to strange worlds still rely on traditional techniques, as in
Lynch's Mulholland Drive, which owes more to Bergman and Bunuel than
compugimcracky.
perhaps, this trend began with lucas and spielberg, or goes back to
the overly glossy artifice of classic hollywood epics. and in the
80s, action films became far more streamlined and distilled for
optimum cinematic effect, serving up coke-addled highs. Compare First
Blood--which still owes something to the grittiness of 70s
cinema--with Rambo, or first two Rockys with the sequels. But, then
the 70s in American cinema was an exception, a anomaly; and perhaps
today's obsession with artifice over raw in cinema is simply a
continuation of the old tradition of de mille's costume epics.
Previous to the 70s, cinematic image was cosmeticized and since the
80s, everything is so damn chic. There were and will always be
exceptions but only in the early 70s did dirt really look like dirt.
A muddied face in 50s cinema was just fancy make up and now it's
greasy/sweaty Christina Aguilerian photogenic chic.

acting in matrix ranges from nonacting to underacting. only the leader
of bad guy has anyting like a personality--comic book hamfisted
nastiness. whatever the good guy/bad guy dichotomy, it's hard to tell
what quality sets humans apart from the bad guys. the honcho bad guy
has a million clones of himself, but humans are hardly any different
from one another. funny, but i found the same problem with LOR, where
one knight was indistinguishable from the next; same was true among
hobbits and among orcs, every member of its kind exhibiting the same
characteristics. yes, as the title of lucas's latest film suggests,
today's blockbuster cinema has been conquered by cloned effects and
personalities. Unlike Star Wars or Indiana Jones movies, both Matrix
and LOR are populated more with broadly outlined characteristics than
with unique characters. star wars was about a united struggle against
the empire of clones, a intergalactic ant colony. that luke, leia,
solo, yoda, kenobi, chewbacca, even r2 and c3po had distinct
individualities was crucial the the message that among the good guys,
individuality was not completely subsumed under groupthink. this
sense of quirky individuality is missing in matrix and LOR, where good
guys completely lose their uniqueness and merge with goodness as
all-consuming cosmic vibe. both neo and LOR characters are busy
rubbing their hands over some magical orb, absorbing the sacred and
soothing energy, like the people in allen's sleeper.

in matrix films as with other films of its ilk--star wars, LOR, Pearl
Harbor, Planet of the Apes by Burton, Starship Troopers, etc--what's
notable is the revival of fascist aesthetics. there were always
strains of this in pop culture, in the notion of the charimatic figure
worshipped by the masses--think of elvis in pop music; more specific
to cinema, in the temptation to push possibilties for momumentalism
and mayhem to the fullest extent. peckinpah and leone understood this,
so did many japanese filmmakers and anime artists. cinema, by its
very nature--big, expansive, momumental, pageant-like, spectacular--,
was from the beginning an irresistible tool for abandoning of all
restraints--emotional and rational. it didn't request participation
so much as demand complete surrender from the audience. in this sense,
cinema's effect has been closest to music and grows ever more so. mtv
aesthetic, though much aligned by the more intellectual literary
cinephile, is in some ways the most logical product of cinematic
possibilties. in triumph of the will, it's not so much what hitler
says but how he looks, shot from low angle, standing like a god,
supported by show of national/racial unity. though wacko brothers may
consider themselves leftists, their sensibility is closer to
riefenstahl than godard. even eisenstein, in the use of rush and
clash of images to bypass the intellect and assault the audience at an
almost shamelessly subliminal level, was practicing something closer
to nietzscheanism than marxism. whatever one may say of godard, he
understood that 'oppression' must be rooted out at the very core of
human consciousness. it's not enough that people make movies with
leftist messages when these films rely on the same kind of emotional
jolts and suspension of disbelief as films of the right or the
bourgeoisie. battle of algiers, from this angle, is no less guilty of
fooling and lulling the masses than ten commandments. too bad godard
threw his lot with mao, but it seems to have been based on a
completely false misreading of maoism, perhaps understandable since
many liberals were likewise fooled; even bill buckley, upon returning
from china on the coattails of nixon, opined that the chinese had
accomplished great economic gains when in truth the vast majority were
inches away from starvation. anyway, back to matrix... the wacko
brothers believe in the power of cinema to bypass anything resembling
intellect and reaching into our deepest recesses of subconsciousness
and healing the soul. the fascist sensibility of matrix has been
diluted thru other influences, and for that reason the viewer might
not so easily recognize it as such. for example, starship troopers is
acceptable because the obviously fascist army is multi-racial. so, if
the good guys, though regimented like fascists, are made up of people
of different ethnic cast then they must not be fascist. simiarly, a
white guy screaming white superiority is nazi scum, but a
multicultural-america-uber-alles is progress. star wars, attacked for
its fascist sensibility, was tolerated once lucas had some blacks and
asians in supporting roles. as long as kids of all backgrounds share
in the fascist candy of adrenaline rush, no problemo. also, we
associate fascism mostly with european politics of the mid 20th
century and are often blind to manifestations of fascist aesthetics
and sensibility in all their myriad forms. it's akin to a devout
catholic not fully realizing how much the catholic tradition has been
syncretized with its anti-christian opposite of paganism. there are
elements of fascism imbedded in the works as disparate as last of the
mohicans, deliverance, hidden fortress, godfather, and just about
every heavy metal or rap performance or music video. they all exult
in redemption thru blood, the appeal of power and charisma, the
primacy of survivalist instinct, of finding true meaning of life thru
violence and mayhem, of playing god or, at least, prometheus. neo as
the gun toting messiah is yet another variation of the christian/pagan
syncretism. he's the rave version of messiah the hebrews dreamed of,
a badass terminator sent from heaven and not some peacenik hippie
kid(though, soon enough, christians too were armoured with a paganist
intoxication and worship of might and power). it's a fascism that has
also been made more palatable and acceptable thru a merging with the
sensualism of afrobeat; hitler as fuhrer: bad, but hitler on ice:
good. just as it was okay for schwarzeneggar to be aryan robot killer
as long as he spoke a few lines of spanish(how adorably inclusive),
it's okay for neo and his buddies to cut down countless enemies as
long as they're groovin' to afrobeat. and, then there's exotic
eastern philosophy which supposedly sprinkles all this mayhem with
some spiritualist grace(last samurai seems to be another example of
how fascism is cool as long as it takes place among or has elements of
nonwestern tradition; the contradiction of multiculturalism is while
it disapproves of chauvanistic pride among whites, such feelings among
non-whites is seen as noble. so, it's bad for cruise to be white
fascist killing indians but wear some samurai gear and play japanese
fascist--at least the pre-modern kind--and one's conscience need not
be bothered about hacked off limbs and macho strutting). wacko
brothers seem not to have noticed that there is a fascist strain in
eastern thought as well, especially as developed thru the austere form
of zen, which was in large measure buddhism pared down to serve the
needs of a warrior society. the oppressive samurai class understood
and practiced zen, not the average peasant. the fascist element has
been diffused into the technedelic fog of whatever drugs the whacko
brothers have taken, as well as linked with the gypsy-ish fascination
with fortune telling and magic. and, the futurist aspects of fascism
have been blurred by the breakneck style of the videogame.

certain culture critics have commented on the influence of
nietzsche--the nihilism of the will to power--on the left. today's
revolutionary rhetoric against oppression exhibits the nihilistic will
to power. consider the appeal of punk and rap. it's not so much the
message as the style of explosive or masterful power that lures its
fans. if the clash had sat down quietly and tried to spread a sober
formula for social justice in book form, they would have just another
bunch of do-gooders. the true appeal was the display of wildness, of
power; of course, the conceit of social consciousness was nice too, as
self-congratulatory narcissicism that punkers know best. and, same
goes with a rap act like public enemy. there are serious and earnest
social right workers--young, old, etc--in the black community trying
to inspire people toward socio-political justice but how boring to the
average teen; so-called progressive middle class kids would prefer to
embrace the charismatic celebration of power by rappers like public
enemy, who have turned social consciousness into a self-promotional
power trip.
another contradictory problem in contemporary leftism is the unholy
blend of the idea of progress with the idea of kultur. traditionally,
leftists stood for universalism and rationalism whereas the right
stood for particularism and irrationalism. to the classic leftist
there is only one kind of person, the man liberated from the shackles
of kultur; an heir to the greek reliance on reason to understand
universal truths and the judeo-christian idea of universal justice for
all under one god. the right, on the other hand, favored the idea of
unique cultures with their own traditions, its own understanding of
reality and its concept of the sacred. particularist right clings to
the sacred in their culture against all rational arguments. to the
japanese before loss in WWII, the emperor was divine and sacred and
belonged to the japanese alone. carl jung and his admirers like
joseph campbell and mircea eliade didn't care so much about whether a
culture was right or wrong so as about understanding it from within,
finding its own 'reasons', its own 'logic', its own cosmology.
culture binds to a people, roots one to the past, and is impervious to
rational argument, and rejects the notion that there is a universal
truth beyond its notion of sacred truth. in the 19th and early 20th
century, the scholars of myths and culture have been on the right,
whereas those involved in rationalist political philsophies have been
on the left. rightists cling onto their notion of sacred thru an act
of faith, thru blood. leftists tried to unify all of mankind thru
universal truth laid bare by science and reason.
of course, we associate christianity with the right, but more than
other spiritual faiths, christianity is universalist and egalitarian,
both in its social concepts and its concept of relationship between
god and man, which is why nietzsche saw it as so much wimpy
pussyfooting for the masses of sheep.

but, for several reasons, the left became affiliated with the notions
of kultur. the triumph of the western imperialism reduced many
backward and primitive cultures to oppressed status which led to the
romanticization of what were essentially rightist--conservative,
irrational and based on the notion of particularist sacred--values as
progressive. american indian culture is a case in point, as well as
the vogue of hinduism among counterculturalists of the 60s who somehow
failed to notice hinduism's sacred notions of the caste system and
other holy guacamole concepts. white leftists, out of guilt, began to
champion nonWestern cultures regardless of those cultures' reactionary
and irrational elements. also, the complete domination of western
ideas and values, while at first inspiring many third world
revolutionaries into universalist marxism, pushed many toward
politicizing and embracing their own cultures in the name of resisting
western imperialism. never mind that they indigenous culture being
preserved is archaic, irrational, particularist, often xenophobic, and
reactionary; as long as cloaked with nobility of resisting the west,
it gained progressive anti-imperialist credentials. for example,
consider the practice of progressive students in korea having dog soup
rallies; for them, it's resistance againt imperialist values of the
west; after all, how dare westerners tell them it's universally wrong
to eat dogs? and, in america, multuculturalism is exaclty the
product of this development, an unholy alliance of kultur and leftism.
so we have blacks, hispanics, asians, muslim, hawaiians, etc. all
embracing their OWN kultur, with the notion that there is only their
OWN history(simplified into their own colorful version of oppression
at hands of whitey), and that their cultures must not be scrutinized
or criticized by outsiders, especially whites. it's their thing, you
wouldn't understand.

60s was probably the crucial period when all these threads came
together, as eric hobsbawn comments about the french student movment
of 68 which was as much as about declaration of personal power as
collective sense of justice. also, with the rise of afro-dionysian
trend in youth culture arising from capitalism, mixed with exotic
mysticism of the east, blended with the radical and rebellious energy
that we associate with being young and idealistic, it set the stage
for the funky calvin klein mystic marxist. consider the
appeal of rightist kultur maven carl jung among the counterculture,
and the resulting fusion of conscious(and rational) marxism and
subconscious(and irrational) mythicism; also, the use of drugs which
undermined the notion of rational truth so integral to the notion of
universal values, justice, and community. a psychedelic immersion
into deeply subjective personal truth, an intensified sense of the
sacred, an irrational idea. what is sacred to one tribe means nothing
to another. to a rationalist a piece of land is soil and grass, to be
owned and traded by laws and contracts, or used for maximum good for
the greatest number of people . soviets thought in terms of workers
and if they had to drill for oil, hell if they cared if some tribe of
siberaian mongoloids said it was sacred to their ancestors.
rationalist capitalism operates on the same materialist assumptions.
but nazism, a neopaganist belief based on irrational notion of sacred
of aryan blood, of tradition, of germanic creative will to power, etc.
thought otherwise. the concept of the sacred invariably breeds the
concept of the profane. if aryan blood is sacred, mixing with
non-aryan blood becomes profane. if an indian tribe says a certain
area is a sacred burial ground, anyone trespassing on that ground
hasn't just violated property laws but a sacred law beyond reason; he
has desecrated what is holy. the concept of the sacred is subjective,
impervious to any objective explanations. there can be no compromise.
leftism, with its universal all-embracing humanism, only makes real
sense as a objectivist ideology. once irrationalism, tribalism,
multi-kulturalims--all subjective personal and cultural
entities--merged with leftism, it lost much of its meaning and power,
just as once the ceo bad guy in matrix merged with the oracle, he got
a bit funny in the head. once leftism became subjectivist, it opened
the pandora's box for every rightist impulse within its ranks. so,
even though hispanics and blacks are united with white leftists in
america, it's purely for rightist reasons, for their own tribal
interests, not in the name of being a all-purpose universalist and
progressive american. if they deemed the republican party's agenda
more helpful to their interests, they would change ship no matter what
the ideology, especially since ideology is dead. leftist ideology
that encourages nationalist sentiments instead of universalist ideals
is a contradiction, a problem that can be observed in all the third
world leftwing movements infected with a strong nationalist and
xenophobic strain despite their internationalist rhetoric. anyway,
the cultural relativist strain of contemorary leftism which favors
subjectivism over objectivism, if followed to its logical conclusion,
not only would champion the cultures of people-of-color from western
imperialism, but can also justify aztec human sacrifice--sacred to its
practitioners--, and even an understanding, if not outright
justification, of nazism, a neo-pagan, irrationalist, subjective
teutonic vision of sacred aryan culture. if the west has no right to
judge the rest because the west's notion of universalist truth
deriving from greek and hebraic traditions is merely one cultural
reality among others, then the rationalist enlightenment culture has
no right to pass judgment on the irrationalist pagan teutonism of the
aryans who were only, like the american indians, trying to recover
their lost cultural heritage. if indeed american indians suddenly
gained the might of a ultra modern military, obsessed with notions of
sacred tribal blood what's to persuade him against reclaiming the lost
sacred territories of his forefathers no matter what the price in
blood? matrix revolutions, taking its inspirations from
multiculturalism which grew out of the nietzscheanization of the left,
with its enamorment with power, upholding subjective reality over the
objective--even claiming there is NO objective reality--, is a
hodgepodge brew from an insane recipe.
granted, this confusion had an early start. marxism-leninism was
supposed to be rational and scientific, unlike the ideology of fascism
based on the notion of the sacred and creative--in the nietszchean
fashion of a superman who creates his own worlds, his own gods. yet,
people being what they are, it has always been impossible to
extinguish the sense of sacred, the need for the spiritual, the allure
of irrationality, which explains why communism soon took on the
characteristic of a religion, its fallen heroes became saints(think of
christian-nietzschean iconography of che guevara), its leaders became
gods--stalin and mao--, and its 'scientific' prognosis of the future
became a utopian mantra. some will even say marx himself was more the
product of the messianistic strains of his age than a rational or
scientific thinker. many have commented that fascism and communism had
much in common despite opposing claims of their ideologies; and one
need only a passing glance at capitalist culture to notice all manner
of irrational impulses. if capitalism has one saving grace, everyone
can be a little hitler--as pasolini once said, though in a despairing
manner--against every other little hitler, everyone's mini blitzkriegs
balancing out in the end into the hum of what we know as democracy,
which one may argue isn't so much the practice of everyone following
same rational guidelines as every irrational impulse being subsumed in
the ocean of a generic, tolerable, and lukewarm irrationality. after
all, how did we end up with algore and dubya as the two main
candidates, and what does it say about a country where the kingmaker
is just as much as jay leno and oprah as learned journalists on
national policy? perhaps it's a good thing that democracy is a sort
of an orchestrated irrational hum than the tool of arrogant egghead
philosopher kings with their all-knowing rationalist knowledge.
anyway, as ray pride, the critic of New City, once said of star wars,
its good nazis vs bad nazis, right? if matrix revolutions is somewhat
uglier, it's due to its more pompous and brazenly political stance,
loaded with far more aggressive ammo, a sort of teens-across-america
as rave party mujahedeens. this is a sort of couchpotato cultural
imperialism of the mind, where the american teen appropriates the real
suffering and struggles of the truly oppressed around the world,
imagines himself as invovled in this titanic struggle, and overcoming
evil simply because he had the courage to attend the screenings, buy
the dvds, and stick the movie poster on the wall. it's like some
fancy campus radical donning a palestinian scarf, ostensibly to show
solidarity with the oppressed arabs, but essentially cloaking oneself
with political fashion, or the phenomenon in the 80s when college
students set up shanty towns in the quads and sat about toking and
strumming guitars, as though rubbing shoulders with those suffering
under apartheid.
oliver stone perhaps understands this weird mix of rightist and
leftist strands best. think of doors and how the figure of morrison
embodies both democratic and facist, both modern and ancient, both
sacred and profane. or, scarface, the vision of immigrant ambition in
a democracy as fascist fantasy, or how to flee castro of communist
cuba and become montana of capitalist america. natural born killers
and its investigation of capitalist, fascist, leftist, anarchist
strains in american culture, qualities that can't be neatly discerned
from amongst eachother, as though all are swirling in a stinking
cesspool.
it's like marx as a transvestite gypsy whore gazing into crystals with
'who wants to be a million' buzzing on the tube somewhere in the
corner.
stone, i think, is ambivalent, being part of this cultural storm
himself; and who isn't except an ascetic traditional academic or a
member of the amish? any given sunday perhaps examined this
phenomenon most thoroughly, where blacks--associated in popular
imagination as noble suffering negro--are often seen as crass boorish
capitalist thugs, where the democratic pasttime of sports is
scrutinized for its power-mania, the exhiliarating fascism of its
bloodthirstness, where teutonic barbarism rubs shoulders with
afro-savagery, where everybody howls about his victimhood while
showing all the characeristics of a rebel-tyrant, where extreme
capitalist ethos have tranformed women into creatures as ruthless,
competitive, and monstrous as any male. it's the most logical extreme
of american egalitarianism, the notion of equal opportunity to reach
the top which means lording over everyone else, being richer, wearing
fancier clothes and more expensive jewelry, and talking faster and
snappier, and outmaneurving everyone else with the utmost ruthlessness
of gordon gekko or tony montana.
leftism's egalitarian embraces the image of the people as militant but
ultimately humble, happy with his humble lot in life, just asking to
be given what's rightfully his in terms of wages and basic services.
in stone's vision of capitalism, everyone is a mini-fascist, whether
jim morrison, gordon gekko, serial killers, or athletes. the main
difference between nazism and americanism is every german wanted to
worship hitler whereas every american wants to be hitler, or at least
a john wayne, elvis, donald trump, or muhammad ali. communist
countries too had their heroes but athletes in the soviet union or
cuba embraced the ideal that their feats were for the glory of the
people whereas muhammad ali, when he called himself the greatest,
meant HE was the greatest. lennon, always sharply observant, once
commented as to how the beatles became bigger than christ,
misinterpreted by southern baptist morons. it's as though the left
caved into the irresistible individualist assertive strain of
nietzschean capitalism, where it was no longer much fun to march in a
civil rights rallies with dignfied poise or attend worker's rallies,
but alot more fun act like a demented retard at a punk concert or go
thru spearchucking savage motions while pumping to hiphop. sing the
Internatinale in unison with your fellow workingclass brethren?
boring and belittling to narcissists of the left! castro, whose early
role model was mussolini before he veered to the left, probably
understood the power of charisma as well as the next guy, which
explains his appeal to radicals in the 60s. one may also recall the
division that brewed dylan and the folk movement represented by the
likes of seeger. seeger and the do-gooders buried their individuality
for the idea of common good whereas electrified dylan's message was I
sing and do whatever I feel like. dylan's persona had its origins in
the beatnik movement that ostensibly was anti-brougeois and
anticapitalist but their favorite music, jazz, was inconceivable
outside the hedonistic consumer culture of capitalism. dylan was a
variation of norman mailer's white negro, though he kept it hid during
they heyday of the folk movement, though to his credit he soon
realized songs like 'blowing in the wind' really blew. leftists first
rejected dylan, but dylan(and hendrix, the who, the doors)ulimately
had more impact on the left than left had on pop culture, which
remains capitalist, narcissistic, and nietzschean.

it's a weird mix, feeding kids the notion that they can be both
mussolini and st. paul, colonel kilgore and buddha, elvis and marx,
just as samurai warriors, thru zen, bought into the notion of reaching
spiritual purity by chopping off an opponent's head. star wars sold
this schlock too but it still pretended to be mostly spiritual rather
than political. matrix, despite its new age shenanigins, harbors a
much more nakedly political sensibility. in this regard, it's as much
an heir to open city, battle of algiers, and burn as to mythic epics
like lang's niebelungen and star wars. however, neorealist classics
like open city and paisan, and the pontecorvo movies believed in the
individual essentially as a vehicle greater cause. the individual was
not glamourized in his poltical struggle. the communist hero of open
city dies horribly. the partisan victims of paisan are dumped into
the water which return to calm as though nothing happened. the black
hero of burn accepts his fate as long as he knows he might inspire
others. they accept their sacrifice quietly, without brouhaha. as
long as the struggle goes on, it was worth the price. it's also true
of sands of iwo jima--with both liberal-democratic (war against
japanese militarists) and conservative-patriotic sensibilities--where
john wayne is felled instantly by a stray bullet. though neo does die
in matrix revolutions, not before the narcissistic immolation of a
teen raver on who boogin' ability the fate of the world depends. the
idea of salvation and redemption is linked primarily with the
individual. instead of the traditional collective ideal of leftism,
you have the fascist notion of the freedom fighter as the superman.
one finds similar strands of thought in islamic terrorists of sep 11,
who perceived their sacrifice not only as that of soldiers but as
representatives of godly power.
one may wonder when this notion of violence and sacrifice became so
self-inflating, nietzschean, and orgasmic in cinema? whatever happend
to good old kill or be killed in hawks, ford, kurosawa films(though
deaths in throne of blood and sanjuro are rather excessive)? was it
bonnie and clyde where the act of dying united the two hoodlums in
love heaven? peckinpah's wild bunch where its heroes attained
transcendence in their final and finest hour? it's hard to think of
heroes in current cinema who exercise violence or die in any other way
than exaggerated, promoting the individual above all else. and perhaps
the self-centered emotional dynamic of rock music had an impact.
consider stone's platoon where it's not enough to have defoe drop dead
but instead as christ as hendrix at monterey pop in slo-mo death
rapture. or consider rambo or the terminator who, unlike john wayne
and other tough guys of the past, stand like mythic gods, whose every
act of gesture is not only of manly physique but godly mystique. this
indivdualist momumentalism which existed in music--opera--, religion,
and even in cinema of German Expressionism and Japanese nihilist
samurai/yakuza, probably gained its most potent form in the films of
sergio leone, arguably the most influential director since the 60s.
and, it's probaby from leone that even leftist cinema became afflicted
with this momumentalist strain; and, also riefenstahl's influence
probably seeped into guys like the wacko brothers indirectly thru
lucas's star wars movies. dirty harry, widely considered a fascist
fantasy, is inconceivable without the influence of leone. the weird
thing is today's leftist mode of expression--in film, music, even in
real politics--stylistically owe more to a movie like dirty harry than
to the films like open city. the ideal of the collective is dead or is
merely reduced to window dressing in leftist cinema. eisenstein's
early films didn't care for individual personalities; the star was the
PEOPLE.
but, alexander nevsky, though a soviet film, is primarily a
chauvanistic nationalist epic, not leftist. sontag once called soviet
communism 'fascism with a human face'. much can be said for leftwing
cinema. the words may come from marx but it spouts from the face of
il duce.
taking the cue from the style-centrism of leone, it's no longer enough
to be on the correct side. you gotta have style, pizzazz. you gotta
wear the right kind of shades, wear the proper kind of shoes, have a
cool style of hairdo. even if you look poor, dirty, and grubby, it has
to be a fashionable grungy mode. this sensibility was quite apparent
among the black panthers who, in their obsession with image and style,
were more like nazis than maoists--who, with their spartan peasant
ideals, wore baggy clothes and considered such items as sunglasses as
symbols of bourgeois decadence. wearing berets, leather jackets,
donning hip sunglasses, and ever so eager to pose for photos while
holding rifles like gangsters or rock stars, the panther sensibility
had more in common with the jock sensibility of hitler and his cohorts
than the geek sensibility of intellectual and anti-sensualist order of
the left. it's surely one reason why the movement disintegrated so
badly, what with infantile egos thinking revolution was a fashion
show, poster art exhibition, and a strutting james brown act... all
degenerating into divisiveness, betrayal, drug addiction, criminality,
murder(all impeccably detailed by David Horowitz in Radical Son)...
though i must say bobby seale came up with some decent barbecue
recipes. of course, art and propaganda can remold reality and
fantasize about the past and future, just as madame mao's
revolutionary ballets turned history into cartoons, and hitler's
artistic mind deluded itself into foreseeing a swift aryan defeat of
the subhuman slavs, as though history is a matter of who can sing or
dance better. matrix revolutions, as a poltical fantasy, fall into
this mode. it is a cartoonish re-invention of radical movements of
yesteryear turned into rave video game balletics set in the future;
it's battle of algiers for everyone from campus radical to britney
spears fan, a fantasy manifesto for the generation of gramsci and
calvin klein. in this universe, nobility mainly consists of uttering
tripe with a straight face; kicking like bruce lee, being stoically
bressonian, thinking in star trekese, and boogin' to the beat.

If LOR movies panders to the neopagan Eurocentric prejudices, matrix
revolutions leans toward the fantasies of multiculturalism, most
notably africanism. neo is ennobled by becoming a sort of a white
hybrid of afro-asianism, a jazzy badass cool cat kung fu mystic
hindu, or jungle zen master. or, the white neogro? he's white boy
as honorary person of color. if in action films of the past, a
nonwhite guy often died--nobly in uncle tomish manner(rocky IV, for
example)--in matrix revolutions neo dies so that black folks may live
to kiss, hug, bake cookies, and chainsmoke.
matrix revolutions also panders to ultra-individualist strain of
modern consumerist culture, most markedly embodied by black attitude
of uppityness. so when a young black female pilot hands over her ship
for neo's personal agenda against the orders of her commander on the
notion that it be 'my ship', it's clearly meant as a statement of
black pride, feminist assertion, and individual dignity; never mind
that in a real military context, such behavior is completely
ludicrous. what matters is it appeals to the petulant consumerist
individualist tendencies of the young audience who grew up with the
psychology of privelege and entitlement. for anyone whose idea of
self-worth is based on MY clothes, MY crib, MY car, MY dvd player, MY
cellphone, MY life, MY shoes, etc, etc, this kind of fashionable
uppityness will melt like candy in their mouths. it's cool leftism
tolerant of self-centered, self-gratifying possessiveness.

little in matrix revolutions amounts to poetic imagery, something the
best silent films had in spades. certain images in lang and murnau
shine like jeweled pieces. it was cinema as rheingold. certain
details stood out, carrying a charged power and poignance, as though
they--a ray of sunlight, a woman's face, the movement of a
hand--carried a hidden beauty revealed to us only thru art. but the
aesthetics of matrix revolutions--and LOR and anything by michael bay
or john woo, etc--do not believe in cinema's poetic potential.
something is poetic when it is at once understated and energized.
instead, images in matrix and its ilk are like a hungry animal,
constantly lunging, surging, thrusting. the ring in LOR is
essentially a neat toy to be squabbled over by kids. even when jackson
visually fixates on the ring, we feel its gimmicky power but not its
disturbing beauty. ring is more a badass ho' than a beautiful
temptress. much is same in matrix revolutions. there is only one
poetically charged moment, when the flying battleship(technically not
a spaceship as it usually plays gopher)bursts above the dark clouds
into sunlight. the moment gains poetic power thru context. sunlight,
not necessarily poetic in and of itself, has virginal beauty to those
who never felt its glow--same with the ending of THX 1138 where a
sunset becomes a godly revelation. but, mostly matrix revolutions is
image as music and mostly mindless music. if classical music blended
idea with emotion and the silent films that were influenced by this
music used images thematically, matrix revolutions's conception of the
image is purely sensual. this division probably also exists between
traditional musicals and the music video. in a fred astaire or gene
kelly musical, a performance that takes place across space whereas in
music vidoes, space rattles to the feel of the music. in the musical,
music is part--even if the dominant part--of its landscape where in
the music video, music is the landscape, shaping and molding every
corner; the synthesis between image and sound is complete and
inseparable.

but if cinematic imagery must be music and not poetry , then the wacko
brothers have a decisive advantage over peter jackson. i'm willing to
bet jackson is a heavy metal/grunge fan, and it may account for why so
much in LOR is sloppy and shapless, spilling all over the place like
king kong's diarrhea. wacko brothers, on the other hand, possess a
genuine film sense--though infantile in range--, a musical manner of
matching images together, a DJ's instinct for groove and rhythm, a
sense of bounce, pulsating momemtum. wacko brothers understand the
intricate trickery of the art of cinema as music whereas jackson
mostly just piles one slop atop another. of course, the average boob
is bound to be deceived by the more respectable sheen of LOR--the
knights in armor, enchanted forests, medievalist epic battles--and
mistake LOR for being highbrow respectable art as compared to matrix
the rave party movie but, look beneath the thin fabric and both are
predicated on the same mechanics, just that wacko brothers do it much
better. but as pt barnum has said, there's a sucker being born every
minute. if they sold people back in the 50s the notion of ten
commandments as religion and art, then LOR does it for suckers of our
age; and i suspect 30 yrs from now, LOR will look even worse than any
Demille film which at least genuine actors and heroic moments and
showcased sturdier cinematic ability.

if matrix revolutions is worth seeing, why? first, there are a few
genuinely great scenes. the first shootout is something i hadn't seen
before, a variation of dancing on the ceiling as shoot em up. what
makes it work so beautifully is the smooth circular motion, with
villains rushing up the walls to the ceiling and rushing down with the
good guys in swirling pursuit. the effect is vertiginous across a
horizontal plane and delightfully disorienting as though gravity can
be nullified by groove and rhythm.
the next great scene involves giant drill-tipped joints smashing thru
the dome of the underground headquarters, whereupon countless
octopoids--aka sentinels--come swarming in to do battle with
gundam-outfitted soldiers. the idea is old, the classic beleagered
armed force facing a countless enemy(Zulu, Starship Troopers, and more
recently blackhawk down and yes, LOR), but the riproaring speed at
which the wacko brothers juggle all manner of tricks, stunts, and
angles is breathtaking and far less numbing than in your average
blockbuster spectacle like Pearl Harbor and the first LOR. though a
battle on massive scale, it's kept tight, like a well muscled rectum
shitting out solidly packed turds whereas bay and jackson's limp
sphincters make for loose visual stool. there's a fit, muscular
quality about wacko brothers' ability, kind of like filmmaking as a
session of taebo. little is wasted and everything falls into place.
it's not epic, but like terminator, aliens 2, and countless hongkong
action films it's a lean, well-toned, and slick critter.
wacko brothers know just when to cut, when to thrust, parry, kick,
jump, etc. they have a martial arts instincts as filmmakers, unlike
jackson and bay whose idea of action is to just charge in like a WWF
wrestler. it's this almost elegant quality amidst the mayhem that
makes wackos better visualists. also, wackos maintain the the thrill
of the conflict by maintaining the high level of suspense. when
hobbits begin to beat up hordes of orcs or when a great elephant army
is suddenly overcome by casper and friends in LOR movies, or when the
empire is beaten up by ewoks in return of the jedi, so goes the
suspense. but, in matrix the octopoids are really nasty. they wipe out
the entire gundam force, smashes the leg of a bazooka girl and then
tears her to shreds, etc. these baddies can really do damage.
speaking of gundam, matrix also owes alot to japanese anime which in
turn owes a great deal to western sci-fi, especially movies like star
wars, alien, terminator, and blade runner. if animestethics
contributed to something new to visual style to current hollywood
filmmaking, it's in the striking use of editing, where free flowing
image is suddenly cut and matched to another producing an off kilter
effect. japanese film aesthetics have been angular, neatly sliced and
spliced, as though each frame is a separate two-dimensional plane
apart from the other. it's a ginsu knife style, where instead of
images being molded together into an organic whole, they are cut and
spread apart like a fish on a cutting board and arranged neatly like
so many slices of sashimi. this striking contrasts among the angular
perspectives of images can be seen in samurai and yakuza films; anime
sped up this process to the point where the images jumped out at us
like shards of broken glass. watch something like akira, which though
fast paced and seemingly flowing together, impresses us with a sense
of world fractured, as though water is being instantaneously frozen,
smashed, melted, frozen, smashed, melted, etc at the blink of an eye.
hong kong cinema is also known for its wild unpredictable editing yet
images hold together just as a rubber ball bouncing off walls but
stays a rubber ball. in anime such as bubblegum crisis and akira, the
world remains fractured, disjointed, made up of innumerble separate
plaques of reality endlessly dissecting one another. matrix
revolutions borrows from both aesthetics and adds something all its
own.

when we watch a movie like matrix revolutions, most of us probably
don't care about the characters, story, meaning, or etc, just as no
one listens to rock music for lyrics except in rare occasions. it
would be nice if people could make star wars, LOR, matrix, etc. movies
which had genuinely fascinating characters and a well written script.
surely they have the all the ingredients to be genuinely epic,
meaninful, even spiritual. but, they've all been little more than
blockbusters targeted as kids and teens. things being what they are,
the most we can ask is for these films to offer something new, to up
the ante. why anyone still complains about lack of depth in these
movies still baffle me. alot of people have said attack of the clones
has a crap story compared to the first three. really? did the first
three have decent scripts? good acting? or, those who have said
matrix revolutions is just a special effects extravaganza compared to
the first matrix movie. if anything, the first one was insufferable
because it spent an inordinate amount of time developing its
epimistological/phenomelogical/whateverological gobbledygook, all of
it utter caca. if you're serious about revolution read the communist
manifesto. if you care about philosophy, read hegel and if you want
salvation, go to church or eat some granola and meditate.
thankfully, matrix revolutions just focuses on what wackos are
genuinely good at: mtv hongkong videogame style action. all the
nonsense having been developed in the first 2 films(didn't see the
second), the last film--like ROTK--is content to hold nothing back and
go for gotterdammerung. look, even if a genuine artist like coppola
couldn't satisfactorily summarize the meaning of apocalypse now; fat
chance with a raver with video game mentality. besides, there was
precious little in matrix 1 that was original. it was essentially a
wire-fu/john woo shoot out tweaked with some outlandish computer
effects. but, that dancing-on-the-ceiling-shootout in matrix
revolutions... that was truly new, a real mindblower.
so again, the question comes down to what does the latest movie do
that predecessors haven't done? terminator 2 was badass for its time
for introducing the computer genereated t-1000 whereas terminator 3 is
interminable not only because it's bad filmmaking but offers no new
idea. i didn't note anything original in LOR, and though ROTK was
hardly broke new ground, it did have some grand moments; it was not
original in quality, only in quantity, which still counts for
something; that mastodon cavalry attack was tremendous. but, matrix
revolutions uses old ideas in a genuinely new way. and they also know
something about pacing, proportion, and juxtaposition of which jackson
hasn't a clue. wackos know cinema like the sweet sciencd, whereas
jackson swings like a mule. wackos know how to skip stones on water;
jackson hurls big boulders that just go SPLASH.
of course, a movie that lasts for all time gives us images that
outlast their novelty. i'm not so sure terminator 2 is all that
impressive anymore. but, even though lang's metropolis is mostly
boring nonsense, it has 2 or 3 scenes that will last for all
time--factory turning into moloch, the tower of babel scene, and
robotress coming to life.
matrix revolutions is, perhaps, on that level. it lacks the sustained
bravura and imaginative force of something like murnau's faust but it
does offer a handful of stunningly mounted ideas that might still
impress viewers 50 yrs from now; that dancing-on-the-ceiling-shoot-out
was one cool fusion of ingenuity and film sense.

neo is nominally the main character in the movie and his love interest
in carrie anne moss who looks somewhat like k.d. lang with shades, but
both are dull and boring and hardly stand out amongst others who are
also invariably dull and boring... except for the gundam leader, who
had something like a real personality. in terms of sex appeal, jada
pinkett the black pilotess blew away the competition, not that there
was much anyway, what with moss looking a bit dikey(though dignified
enough), keanu looking like on another bill and ted adventure,
fishburne with a rather visibile paunch, and others having tattoos
which is always ugh in my book.
when moss(trinity?) is mortally wounded and dies in a longish
farewell scene, the movie comes to a deadstop because characters mean
nothing to us(just like insufferable love scenes in attack of clones).
how sad are we supposed to feel when someone we've mostly seen
wearing shades and kicking innumerable butts croaks? hardly more
traumatic than losing a life in a video game.
nemo, who dies a bit later later--having a bonus life from racking up
more points?--after kicking butt, is blinded midpoint thru the movie.
an homage to The Killer by John Woo? An allusion to Samson? at any
rate, it opportunes the wackos to conceive of some insanely
magnificent visuals. nemo has lost normal vision but has gained
something like meta-vision, like infrared capacity to can pick up the
essence of objects in his meta-field of view. this is a variation of
what happens in LOR whenever fredo puts on the ring, but wacko
brothers's effects are genuinely ingenuous. nemo sees the world as a
shimmering waves of gold dust, flaming and lapping all around the
space around he walks, lacing into strange patterns. this is a GREAT
moment in contrast to the totally generic effect by jackson with that
cliche of bleaching electricity going haywire which goes back to the
first frankenstein movie.
even when rehashing tired ideas, wacko brother do it with such dash
that we momentarily lose sight of the obvious referencs. for example,
the final fight between neo and ceo is a kungu version of meet me at
the ok corral in the middle of wall street(one wonders why a computer
with technology so advanced would resort to defeating enemies with
chopsocky, not to mention committing the age old 007 villain mistake
of gabbing on and on when the good guy is down, which goes to show no
amount of hightech programming can outwit the age old programming of
screenwritings 101). but, just look at the scene, neo looking like
badass in leone fashion, running slo-mo upon splashing water--chariots
of fire?--against the bad guy in a kungfuish joust, the water bursting
all over the place upon the clash of fists in pure wong kar wai style,
with splattered water raining back down in globules thick enough to
thrill My Neighbor Totoro, whereupon the antagonists leap into sky
kungu in superman mode, with things finally going kabloom ala Akira,
though not before a long mudwrestling contest and a slo-mo punch on
the ceo that would have turned marciano green with envy. and, of
course, the lull in battle of octopoids and humans reminds us of
nausicaa of the valley of the wind. it's no longer useful to trace
who started what and who influenced whom as much in matrix resembles
spiderman, dark city, LOR, etc, etc, but wackos certainly have a
firmer grasp and command of the medium than raimi--who's still the
better overall artist--and that grubby barbarian slopster jackson.
in boxing, it's often said the style makes the fight. and, different
sports have their own idiosyncratic style, rhythm, pace. consider
bowling, sumo, wrestling, basketball, baseball, and boxing. for a
sports filmmaker, each requires a different approach, where the
visual style has to match the physical nature of the sport. same goes
for nature documentarians, with each species--weasels, bears, birds,
turtles, crabs--demanding a particular stylistic approach to capture
the essence of their behavior. the mtvidoegame style suits the
material for matrix revolutions but is out of place in the LOR
universe. matrix revolutions, taking place in tight claustrophic
spaces where the main form of combat is acrobatic kungfu can have
camera as fancy dj fingerwork, but jackson's constant rock show act
reduces the grandeur of LOR.

matrix is essentially like this. imagine a confused middleclass kid
who, in a single day, smoked too much pot, browsed thru some trendy
mysticist book at tower records, accompanied his ass-tattooed
girlfriend to a palm reader, then took some ecstasy and grooved at a
rave show, got home and played a little video game, and then lay on
the sofa and then let everything fall into place; wallah, matrix!
how else could anyone come up with a cookie-baking, chainsmoking black
woman as the all-knowing oracle who, in the final scene, is seen
bargaining the fate of the world with a lordly english nobleman? do
wacko brothers frequent a cookie bakery owned by a black mama, and, if
so, what does she put in those cookies anyway? or, how about the the
survival of mankind depending on the potency of keanu reeve's nuclear
powered roundhouse kick? to what extent are we supposed to take this
seriously or as camp? what with the oppressive solmenity of every
perfomance, the game is never given away, but then ah! it must be
postmodernism where such labels are no longer relevant. how
different from tron, which had charm and innocence. tron too drew from
previous films, most notably silent classics but was thankfully devoid
of pretensions; also, the odd relation of connectedness/separation
between real and cyber world was handled with more subtlety than in
matrix as the evil computer of tron seem to rely on something a little
more sophisticated than a flying kick.
neo's confrontation--more accurately peace making--with the mother of
all raisinettes seems almost lifted from tron where jeff bridges
finally comes face to face with cybubba; the raisinette god is,
however, a very impressive creature with fudgicles sticking out from
all sides, looking mean and nasty like mr. sun that i remember seeing
in claymation rudolph the rednosed reindeer, though unlike mr sun it's
dark and gloomy though still pretty mean enough. this scene is also
cool for having little machines crawl like bugs--cousins of the
spiders in minority report--with is genuinely creepy and unnerving, as
though machines have become so out of control that it has its own pest
control problem. anyway, yet once again, in order for keanu to join
forces with raisinette god to defeat the ceo baddies, an pointy object
is stuck inside the back of his head. i dunno, but this strikes me as
a literal rendering of 'mindfucking'--or 'mindbuttfucking' since it
requires backdoor entry--, and i can't help thinking the entire matrix
series is predicated on the notion of thought as orgasm, more about
in-n-out penetration than penetrating insight.

matrix is most insipid when pandering to the populist biases and
narcissistic fantasies of all racial and ethnic groups--a kind of
ethnicity as a menu in a fusion restaurant where you can get something
basically chinese or italian but peppered with a dash of everything
else. so asians can see themselves as mystical and badass, blacks can
see themselves as noble, beautiful, and
hip-notic, and whites can see themselves as revolutionary soldiers for
the new utopia as opposed to the priveleged class of ne'er-do-wells as
portrayed by pc left; so much profitable to make white guy fantasize
he's with the rainbow coalition than hassle him for not caring.
matrix fans can see themselves as the greatest
martyr/saint/warrior/intellectual/seer/philosopher/poet/rebelslave
with the purest and noblest of heart and mind. alien movies were
downright lighthearted compared to matrix, which all the bratty,
pampered, obnoxious, self-centered kids of whatever race can watch (or
LOR)and imagine himself the noblest hearted, purest, most courageous,
and uncompromised creature in the universe against the common enemy of
... what? corporate greed! funny since hollywood, a giant corportion
in and of itself, has always sold populism to the sucker masses:
films of frank capra, for example. but, i believe the wacko brothers,
being morons--albeit talented morons when it comes to visual
gizmo--that they are, honestly believe in the power and seriousness of
their message(just as DeMille and Stevens genuinely thought Ten
Commandments and the Greastest Story Ever Told were of the greatest
moral, historical, spiritual, and artistic importance), still,
populism of old days was not only pro-people but based on notion of
people's humility and the importance of valuing and honoring small
things in life. matrix revolutions, more than LOR--which at least had
hobbits--, has a populist message that is entirely narcissistic with
militaristic overtones(so was the image of linda hamilton in
terminator 2, looking badass in shades, military gear, and an ak-47,
strutting off to save mankind; nihilist populism? sodapopulism?).
one's worth in matrix is purely measured by how fast he or she can man
a spaceship, how many rounds he can shoot off at the enemy, how high
he can jump to kick the enemy's arse without your sunglasses slipping
off your nose, etc. if this is to be expected because hardpressed
warriors must emphasize only fighting virtues, then why all the
spiritual gobbledygook with the cookie baking oracle? but then of
course, the oracle, like yoda, also turns out to be a real badass with
the power to scan into her enemies--ala Cronenberg--and undermine them
from inside. cross the kindly image of aunt jemima with the pomposity
of toni morrison with a voodoo woman, and that's oracle for you(could
it also be allusion to software company Oracle? or how about that
former black vice-president of sun microsystems who's a hightech whiz
but retired to write a fiction novel based on her family roots?)

matrix exhibits some of the nasty charactreristic of radical chic
armchair revolutionary crowd of filmmakers. the casting of cornel
west--a celebrity wanna-be academic whore--gives the game away. this
b.s. radical chic posing is also evident in highcharged and
brilliantly conceived/directed garbage like strange days, an sickening
exercise in narcissism with angela bassett as the ultimate amazon
warrior/freedom fighter/saint joan/martyr/feminist
icon/oprah/conscience of the world, etc etc. It's individualism
perverted into soft-skulled fascist iconography, shallow liberation
iconography further reduced to pap palatable to upper white middle
class privelege wallowing in fashionable guilt thereby extolling black
woman as savior while shaping her to be white people friendly so as to
teach white people to love blacks and blacks to know that it's much
cooler to be this superblack woman as idealized by a uppermiddle white
woman with radical credentials--or pretensions--than some mindless
ghetto idiot of the kind that let OJ go. Indivdiuality is no longer
valued for its singularity and uniqueness but for its ability to kick
ass and be morally deemed to superior to rest of humanity--superior
mainly because it can kick ass.

for all the strengths of matrix revolutions--and they are
substantial--it's ultimately impressive without being memorable.
because it operates almost entirely on one's sensations, once it's
over, it's over, like a themepark ride or fireworks. the rush of
images is too insanely--albeit exhilaratingly--fast for the human mind
to register as anything other than a series of jolts.
when, as in saving private ryan, we believe in the substance of the
characters we still come off from the feverish images with the notion
of having shared in a truly violent and heartwrenching experience.
when the violence is as unreal as in matrix revolutions, the rapid
fire imagery only has superficial value. for the same reason, the
chariot race in ben hur is unforgettable whereas the more elaborate
visual effects in phantom menace is over once it's over. attack of
clones was impressive for lucas's relying on classical models of
filmmaking over the mtvideogame approach that he relied on almost
exclusively in phantom menace.
worse, some of the visual schemes in matrix revolutions, as in LOR, is
often monochromatic, very much the worst when neo's craft flies over
an overcast landscape which is purest cliche of gloomy gothic
landscape of your typical videogame or comicbook. perhaps, this is the
product of the still nascent limitations of CGI, but then attack of
the clones must be an exception for there was genuine textural
richness in the image.

whatever the connections the rave movement that spawned matrix
revolutions has with the psychedia of the sixties that spawned thx
1138--a neglected but key early 70s cinema--, the discrepancies are
more interesting. essential to psychedelia was the notion of back to
nature. thx 1138 ends with thx crawling out of the hole and standing
under a towering sky, under nature. and godard's alphaville and
truffaut's fahrenheit 451--though not psychedelic--expressed freedom
thru abandonment of technology and the embrace of nature of romance,
of woods, or journeying to the edges of the known world to wherever
the highway ended. matrix revolutions's final image is of a sunset as
in thx but it's fake sunset, as though virtual reality is forever,
that we can never be free from technology, that we can only live in
tension filled compromise. this is also true of many sci-fi movies
like existenz where all notion of reality and fakery is blurred.
how different from the back to nature psychedelia of 60s, where it was
essential to acknowledge and tune into nature own rhythm, its own
music, its own mind. woodstock was 3 days in mud, in nature. you
had to SUFFER thru it; no matter what the pain or discomfort, you had
to meld in with the sky, rain, mud, and shit. not that they were
totally honest as 60s deluded themselves into thinking nature rocked
to the sly and family stone. but, there was a genuine effort to
connect with the world outside that of man's hustle and bustle.
but technedelic movement--outgrowth of psychedelia and merged with
cyber technology,which also promises an exploration of the infinite
realm of the mind--, founded upon gizmo dance music, electronic
afrobeat, designer drugs affecting emotions more than expanding
consciousness, and comfortability of suburbia abhors nature and is
more at home at virtual reality. matrix is in enamoured of virtuality
because unlike nature, it can completely be in tune with a restless
computato, couch potato of internet age.
computato is not eager to sit under the sun, with mosquitos buzzing
all around, cultivate a meditative patience. he has few hippie
delusions but plenty of yuppie tastes despite his progressive
pretensions. go three days without a shower? ha. it's okay to
imagine being grungy on screen as a rebel warrior thru a virtual
reality video game but don't expect such creature to hike thru woods
where deer and the antelope go doo doo. if they want a taste of
meditative stillness, it must only be instantaneous, at a rave party
in a sterile setting.

lacking in matrix revolutions and others of its ilk are the back to
nature visionary strivings of excalibur, emerald forest, aguirre wrath
of god, or 13th warrior. even the dark underworld of humans in
matrix is a fashion statement, more hiphappy than haphazard. It's
revolutionary chic, with bob marley hairdo's and arm tattoos, skimpy
sleeveless t-shirts wore by GI Janes, and as though after all this
asswhupping and shooting and blasting, there's a shower room next door
to go and tidy up in.
same with LOR. LOR allows the dorky teens to feel comfortable because
despite its epic panorama it looks so computer friendly. it's a world
of simple ideas and images digitally cloned into the horizon. every
pebble, every cloud, every tree and buidling glimmers with fakery.
it's nature sterilized of its uniqueness, its fecundity, and then mass
manufactured into toys that come with kids meal at mcdonalds. in
13th warrior, we sense every tree nests insects, birds, and lizards.
in LOR a dark forbidding forest is simply a compu-prop, a
one-dimensional idea, more a mood piece than a place. it's a computato
paradise.
the matrix, the real world the rebels escape to is as phony as the one
they've been trapped in.

matrix revolutions's ending is courageous in one respect, something it
shares with terminator 3. in the latter, the world goes blam. and in
matrix revolutions, neo and trinity croak. did such downer endings
cost them at least 50 million each at the box office; depressing
endings translate badly by word-of-mouth. by coincidence, the big
kahuna of blockbuster sequels, Annakin Becomes Hitler will end with
the biggest bummer of all. is it just coincidence or does it in
some way betray a fatalism that has seeped into our
spiritual/political/popular culture?

[Nuki Mouse]

Gaza, by the sheer length of this trolling, you have raised yourself to new
levels troll-dom.
What happen to "Lisa Morgandunst," or was that just the name of your
inflatable doll?
I see you added the Matrix to your list of other lame films like Excalibur
to use to try to detract from LotR

Q: Why was filming on Excalibur held up?
A: Some one broke all the green camera filters.

Q: Why was filming on Excalibur held up a second time?
A: some one told the actors to act, not over-act

Q: What was the name of the acting coach on the set of Excalibur?
A: William Shatner

Q: Name a movie (at $17 mil gross box office) made in 1981 that did not even
make back the money it took to make and distribute it, and was nominated for
one minor Oscar, which it lost?
A: Excalibur.

--
"This is just my opinion, I maybe wrong" D. Miller
"Defend free speech! Read a banned book today!" unknown.
"I may not like what you say, but I will defend your right to say it with
my Life" Voltaire

Nuki_Mouse

"ville terminale" <termin...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d8e25435.04020...@posting.google.com...

[Sam's the Man]

1. Don't top post
2. Snip troll length posts. Think of the trees!

[D BlaDe]

(zzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

[Nuki Mouse]

"Sam's the Man" <samd...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:e8e2ac15.04020...@posting.google.com...

> 1. Don't top post
> 2. Snip troll length posts. Think of the trees!

1. I don't normally top post, it was just an accident (see 2.)
2. I meant to snip the entire post, I just forgot and accidentally sent it
before snipping.

[Erik Jensen]

You may be right.
I have not seen matrix revolutions (and have no intention to do so)

BTW - What matrix revolutions have to do with Tolkien ???
/Erik J
"ville terminale" <termin...@hotmail.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:d8e25435.04020...@posting.google.com...